PNCA News

Faculty member Linda Wysong celebrates the final installation of her major public art project, Eye River, in Southeast Portland. Willamette Week art critic Richard Speer writes about the project which came to fruition through a couple of years of public process. Funded by “Percent for Art” program and a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Wysong’s series of three large sculptures, based on logging implements, are part of the city’s “Route to the River/Green Street” project.

In a Portland Tribune piece titled PNCA Starts Transformation, Jim Redden notes that even though construction has just begun, “renovation progress is everywhere,” including the removal of the dropped ceilings and the outdated heating and cooling system.

Join KGW and President Tom Manley as they take a behind the scenes hard hat tour of PNCA’s future home, the Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Center for Art and Design. Construction has begun on the renovation of the 511 Broadway Building with a move in date of January 2015.

The Oregonian, in an article entitled, “Pacific Northwest College of Art begins work on new HQ, set to open in January 2015,” notes, “Contractors for the Pacific Northwest College of Art have started transforming the 511 Building and post office in Portland into the school’s new campus centerpiece.” The Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Center for Art and Design will be the new PNCA campus flagship, located on Portland’s North Park Blocks along with the College’s Museum of Contemporary Craft and the ArtHouse student residence. Architect Brad Cloepfil is quoted as saying, “I think it will change everything, for the PNCA and for the city…. People will see it as not just a building full of art students, but as a piece of the community.”

PNCA’s new MFA in Print Media has collaborated with Gamblin Artists Colors to create a limited edition ink with a great backstory. Watershed Grey is named for PNCA’s new Watershed fine art print publishing house. A new story on UNTITLED traces the collaboration between MFA in Print Media Chair Matthew Letzelter and Gamblin.

Congratulations to all of the grant recipients of the new Precipice Fund, announced last night at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA). Projects by PNCA faculty and alumni were included in the list of grantees from this new fund seeded by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and Portland’s Calligram Foundation. Among the recipients were faculty member Carl Diehl for Weird Shift Storefront; alumna Rebecca Peel ‘13 and current student Jonah Porter ‘15 for Amur Initiatives; Anna Gray ‘08 and Ryan Wilson Paulsen ‘08 for Not Too Distant Futures; and C.O.P.S., a free conceptual performance school co-founded by Sean Carney MFA ‘09 and faculty member, Michael Reinsch MFA ‘09.

In a collaboration between science and the arts, PNCA Animated Arts students Beryl Allee and John Summerson worked with scientists and publicists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to produce an animated short on the importance of shoreline habitat for salmon. You can read more about the the animated video, which was just released, in this Untitled article.

A historic partnership between Portland Development Commission and PNCA became a reality as the PDC commissioners enthusiastically supported a $20.3 million loan package for the renovation of the 511 building, the College’s future home. The public financing is one of PDC’s largest loan packages ever and is seen as key element in not only PNCA’s vision for a campus centered on the North Park Blocks but also as a key element in the revitalization of the Old Town/Chinatown neighborhood.

“If you’re looking for a catalytic project to kick things off in that part of Old Town, I mean I think this is as good as any and could be the first of many big projects that happen in that four or five square block area,” stated PDC executive director Patrick Quinton.

The financing is part of a $32 million renovation budget which includes a $15 million capital campaign—Creativity Works Here—which is now well over the $11 million mark.

Renovation of the building, known as the Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Center for Art and Design, begins before the end of the year and PNCA will move into its new campus in January 2015.

PNCA moves one step closer to a North Park campus with the sale of the Main Campus Building to Seattle-based Security Properties. The College will continue to lease back the NW Johnson campus building until relocating to the new campus in January 2015. The net equity PNCA will realize from the $11.75 million sale is part of the financing structure for the $32 million construction project, which will transform the current federal building into the Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Center for Art and Design. Work on the project is scheduled to begin this fall. Interest over PNCA’s transformative move is growing and the College’s capital campaign—Creativity Works Here—is well on its way of meeting the $15 million goal with recent gifts pushing the total over $11.2 million.

The academic year kicked off with the opening of PNCA’s first-ever student residence hall—ArtHouse. The striking aluminum-clad building marks the next step in the College’s North Park Blocks campus expansion and the media took notice including the Portland Tribune in the article Arts Campus Rises from Creative Thinking.

Along with the Portland Tribune article, the opening of ArtHouse garnered over 20 articles as well as broadcast coverage.

You can read the full announcement and the winning essays on UNTITLED.

Along with Anne-Marie Oliver and Barry Sanders, Founding Co-chairs of the MA in Critical Theory and Creative Research at PNCA, the judges for 2013 included: Claire Bishop, Professor of Contemporary Art, Theory and Exhibition History, Graduate Center, The City University of New York; Judith Butler, Professor of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature, The University of California, Berkeley, and Hannah Arendt Professor of Philosophy, Europäische Universität für Interdisziplinäre Studien/EGS; Barbara Duden, Professor Emerita, Leibniz Universität Hannover; Julia Kristeva, Professor Emerita and Head of the École doctorale Langues, Littératures, Images, Université Paris Diderot, Paris 7, and recipient of the Hannah Arendt Award for Political Thought; Heike Kühn, Film Critic; and Martha Rosler, Artist and contributor to the Hannah Arendt Denkraum (on the occasion of Hannah Arendt’s 100th birthday).

The Hannah Arendt Prize in Critical Theory and Creative Research is an annual prize competition for those interested in the juncture of art and creative research and in the principles at the heart of the arts and humanities, including sense-based intelligence; the reality of singular, nonrepeatable phenomena; ethical vision; and consilience between inner and outer, nature and reason, thought and experience, subject and object, self and world.

High school students from around the country have come to PNCA to spend 3 weeks working on developing new skills and building portfolios. Students study foundation skills and work in either Design and Illustration or Painting. Check out the photo blog

Assistant Professor Ellen Lesperance has been selected for inclusion in Phaidon’s new edition of Vitamin D, a global survey on contemporary drawing. The book was released last week. Lesperance’s Los Angeles dealer Ambach and Rice has posted an image of her work in the book.

In 2012, Leperance had a solo booth at Frieze with Ambach and Rice where she showed Dear Pippa Bacca and earlier this year her work was on view at Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland as part of the exhibition of work by Ford Fellows entitled We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live.

On Saturday, June 1, Pacific Northwest College of Art held its 2013 Gala at Vigor Industrial’s shipyard on Swan Island. The sold-out event, with a record attendance of more than 500 people, raised more than $511,450, surpassing its $500,000 goal. Together with the PNCA Benefit Art Auction, the College raised more than $580,450 through special events this year to benefit its students, faculty, and programs.

It was an exuberant coming together of PNCA’s community of supporters at an exciting time for the College, as it is poised to expand its campus to Portland’s North Park Blocks. On Swan Island, attendees celebrated surrounded by the Graduate Thesis Exhibition for two of PNCA’s five graduate programs in the Hallie Ford School of Graduate Studies, the MFA in Visual Studies and MFA in Collaborative Design.

Along with the support that was raised for the College’s Annual Fund, President Tom Manley announced a major gift in support of campus expansion. President Manley announced a $1 million gift from Dorothy Lemelson, part of PNCA’s $15 million philanthropic campaign, CREATIVITY WORKS HERE, in support of the College’s strategic move to renovate the historic former federal post office at 511 NW Broadway and anchor the PNCA campus on Portland’s North Park Blocks. Board chair Ann Edlen announced that the $15 million effort, launched in 2012 with a gift from alumna Arlene Schnitzer to name the future Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Center for Art and Design, has surpassed the $10 million mark.

Congratulations to the talented graduates of the class of 2013 from the faculty, staff, and administration of PNCA.

This year, PNCA graduated 154 talented men and women in nine undergraduate programs and four graduate programs. These dedicated artists are painters, innovators, sculptors, filmmakers, illustrators, animators, writers, designers, and question-askers. They are curious. They think creatively. They hold up a lens to the world and show us what works, what’s broken, and how we can make it better.

Since PNCA was founded in 1909, PNCA has graduated 3379 artist and creative thinkers. These graduates have left their mark on the world in ways both large and small. And now the Class of 2013 joins this alumni family.